UNION CITY — Geary Moya cherishes nothing more in life than being married to his wife, spending time with his three grown children and spoiling his seven grandkids, who range in age from 4 days to 17 years old.

What he fears most is that he won’t live to see his grandchildren grow into adulthood.

Diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma﻿ in 2005, the 51-year-old Union City resident is holding out hope for a bone-marrow transplant.

Finding a match is difficult for people of any race, but it becomes exceedingly complicated when a patient is multiethnic, like Moya, who is Hispanic and 1/32-parts Navajo.

“Your chances of finding a marrow donor if you’re 100 percent (one ethnicity) is about 45 to 50 percent. Once you get into mixed race, it’s not cut in half; it’s drastically reduced,” said Carol Gillespie, executive director of the Asian American Donor Program. The program helps recruit donors of Hispanic descent and other minority groups.

According to data from Gillespie’s office, of the 7.4 million marrow donors registered nationally, whites make up 73 percent; blacks, 7.6 percent; Asians, 7.2 percent; Hispanics, 5.2 percent; American Indian/Alaskan Native, 1.1 percent; and people of mixed race, 3 percent.

Moreover, about 36,000 people are diagnosed with leukemia each year, but only 3,000 receive transplants.

Hoping to sign up more people to donate, the Asian American Donor Program will hold several registration drives in coming weeks, including one from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. today, at the Dia de San Juan Festival at History Park, 1650 Senter Road, San Jose.

Another drive will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. July 25 at La Clinica de la Raza Health Fair, 2825 International Blvd., Oakland.

“Registering is a piece of cake. The hardest part is filling out the form. We don’t draw blood anymore,” Gillespie said.

Nowadays, donors give a swab sample from the side of their mouth. If they’re a potential match for a patient, they then undergo a physical exam, including a blood test.

If cleared, the donor may elect a one-hour procedure where needles are injected into the hip to extract bone marrow.

A less invasive procedure would be to have shots injected into the donor for several days to stimulate the production of blood cells, then to obtain the excess stem cells by drawing blood, which takes four to six hours, Gillespie said.

Both procedures may leave the donor feeling sore for awhile, but, she said, “it’s not a whole lot to ask to save somebody’s life. … People need to understand the human aspect of this. It’s not just the cancer patient that could die. His wife, his children — it’s like the whole community is affected.”

Nadine Moya, who will celebrate her 32nd wedding anniversary with Geary at the end of this month, said the most difficult part of watching her husband battle cancer is the feeling of helplessness.

“When you hear that word ‘cancer’ “… it’s like receiving a death warrant,” she said, recalling the moment the couple learned of Moya’s diagnosis. “The only thing I could think of was that no matter what happened, I would be at his side. I would be at every doctor’s appointment, every chemo session. I would walk that road with him.

“I don’t give up hope. I can’t. I have to keep thinking that somewhere, someplace, somebody is a match for him,” she continued. “As long as Geary can fight it, I will fight it with him.”

A former warehouse operations manager until he was laid off, Moya has waited more than two years for a transplant.

He will undergo radiation next week to treat a tumor the size of a golf ball growing under his right arm, he said. But that would only be a temporary fix.

“These tumors will keep popping up until I get a bone-marrow transplant,” he said.

A religious man, Moya said that come what may, his faith has allowed him to accept his fate.

But he wants nothing more than to be around for his family.

“If my life is cut short, I will not be allowed to watch my grandchildren grow up to be beautiful people,” he said. “That’s the whole point of life; first, to see the kids born, then to watch them grow up.”

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